A well intentioned rant about the current state of Advertising, with particular emphasis on Big Dumb Agencies (BDA's) Because, no matter how bad you think it is, it's actually a great deal worse!
"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill pail." George Orwell.

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Several people have sent me emails to let me know that my FaceBook page and information have been compromised. I think this is ‘cos Jack F***… Don’t want to use his name, ‘cos I don’t think it’s his fault… Well, I fucking hope not. Sent me a message earlier, or wrote on my fucking wall, or fucking poked me, or did some other juvenile shit… And it must have had some kind of virus or swine flu or BDA genitalia attached. Anyway, I’ve changed my account password or whatever else they tell you to do… So, it should be OK… But really, I don’t give a fuck. Facebook is only marginally less juvenile than MySpace, which is only marginally less juvenile than Twitter… Which is totally fucking retarded… So, if you need to talk to me… Send me a fucking email. Better yet… Send money.

You have to love David Burn’s post on AdPulp yesterday about the new regime at the king of beers. Apparently, since InBev bought Budweiser, the cost cutting knives are out with a fucking vengeance. Read the full list on AdPulp. My favorite is the fact that employees no longer get free beer. Fuck, I thought that was the whole reason for working at a brewery. Although, if you have a choice of either Bud, or Bud Light, I’d rather drink the Clydesdale’s piss. But as I pointed out in a comment, and on AdScam in the past, you know the Clydesdales are destined to be GeeGee Burgers in the land of the horsemeat eaters... Belgium. Fuck the SuperBowl… They can just CGI the fuckers in. After all, they have centuries of the same nauseating sickly footage. Anyway, fuck ‘em… Serves the wankers right for making the worst beer in the world.

Having decided that their twelfth fucking campaign with paid actors leaping in and out of the same fucking BestBuy after driving around the parking lot a hundred times, isn’t exactly setting the cash registers on fire… The CP+B wunderkind's of Boulder have decided to get brutal. Check out this stolen video of their upcoming campaign. In rehearsals, Steve Ballmer personally destroyed one hundred AirBooks. And loved every fucking minute of it. GodJobs is threatening to fill a giant pit with IBM ThinkPad's and drive a jacked up Hummer backwards and forwards on it ‘til the fucking tires explode. This could develop into something worth watching… Too bad it’s not for real!

And from industry critics, I’ve welcomed the chance to provide clarity and perspective on the real business issues that we face. It’s been important to me that the 4A’s take our critics head on—whether they’re activists, journalists or bloggers—rather than sit back and take the pot shots.We’ve actively opened up the lines of communication on this front, making it a two-way conversation rather than one that fosters gossip and rumors. So, to the incessantly negative adver-bloggers out there, both anonymous and named: I realize it’s your job to rattle the cage a bit—well-intentioned or not—but I challenge the central premise of at least one blogging provocateur’s claim that all big agencies are dumb or that the 4A’s Leadership Conference is—as it was put so colorfully in a recent blog post—simply an expensive “wank fest.”In fact, I’d like to personally invite any skeptics in the blogosphere to next year’s 4A’s Leadership Conference.

Ha fucking brilliant… Nice to know I’m having an effect. Hope next years conference is somewhere exotic. Wonder if Hughie, Dewey, Louie, and the Poisoned Dwarf will be there?

Microsoft just launched their Facebook/Twitter killer! It’s a new social Web application that one observer is calling the equivalent of Twitter plus Facebook on steroids. Well, that deserves a bloody serious look. Brier Dudley of the Seattle Times writes that Microsoft's new Vine software could be a "game-changing" social application. The service, which is in beta in Seattle, is, described as a hyperlocal, personalized message and alert system. It's intended to be a dashboard that people can use to keep tabs of their family, friends, activities and major events in their community. But here’s what’s really interesting… Instead of aiming it at brain dead fucktards who just want to tweet shit to other brain dead fucktards about the current state of the boil on their arse or why they like snails in their fucking corn flakes… Vine is targeted at groups and organizations to alert people to schedules, or as a central hub to keep track of changes, local news and information or updates from services such as Facebook. Microsoft is positioning it as helping local emergency management officials to aid in first-responder type situations. In other words, it’s fucking useful and has a beneficial purpose. How fucking unique is that?

In the “You heard it first here” column, news out today on BrandRepublic that… More than 60% of Twitter users stop using the social networking site one month after signing up for the service, says new research. Mmmm, wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact that after all the hype, people are beginning to realize they have better things to do in life than read staccato bursts of bullshit? Yeah, I have a Twitter Fuckfeed, or whatever it’s called. I haven't updated it since the day I signed on. Wanna know why? ‘Cos I have more important things to do with my time… For fucks sake, I write two blogs, write books, do a weekly column for psfk, comment on other blogs, get eight fucking trillion emails a day… And I make fucking peanuts from all this shit. So, why the fuck do I do it? ‘Cos I feel all that AdScammer love out there… And I know that one day, you’ll actually buy my books, instead of giving me shit that you just ordered one. Remember, I can track sales on Amazon. If you are a starving female student who is a doppelganger for Kate, I will forgive you. Just send pictures!!!

Roger, over at The Tribble Agency points out that the Poisoned Dwarf’s WPP has lost the shoot out for the London Olympics to McCann Erickson, or as The Guardian puts it… The US advertising agency McCann Erickson has reportedly beaten Sir Martin Sorrell's British WPP group for the contract to promote the 2012 London Olympic Games. Ha… Where the fuck is George III when you need him? Wonder if the Queen will take His Gnomeship’s title away? The clown dog is in for a severe fucking kicking in the basement tonight. What’s even funnier is the fact that the contenders were pitching for the right to fucking give their services away… There’s no income from this charade. In return for services in kind the winning agency becomes an official Games sponsor. Apparently, McCann Erickson was offering about $15m in services. Oh yeah, the ad biz is in the shitter, so let’s work for nothing. But the good news is that we get to put an Olympic logo on the pink slips we hand out every Friday. What a bunch of douchenozzles!

You have to laugh at the world shattering news today from the 4A's Leadership Conference in San Francisco… In common with most organizations that don’t have a fucking clue about anything… They are going to “rebrand” themselves!!! President-CEO Nancy Hill told attendees that the group, for years known as the American Association of Advertising Agencies, has officially traded its name for its more commonly used acronym, the 4A's. Oh fucking yes… That will do it. So much for all those New Media, viral, Facebooking, Twittering wankers… We are now the 4A’s! Can you imagine how much thinking, planning, executing and general bullshit went on for months to come up with this momentous decision? Then you wonder why the ad biz in general, and BDA’s in particular are well and truly fucked!

As Haje commented on my Roger Daltrey “Y&R goes Geriatric” post of yesterday, both he and Pete Townsend sold out for a pile of dough, or in the case of Roger, a mountain of beans, back in the seventies. Which is fine, ‘cos everyone from a live Eleanor Roosevelt to a dead fucking Gandhi have shilled for various products through the ages. Sports wankers are usually the worse, with Tiger Woods top of the “I will sell my soul for fucking money” table. This guy endorses everything from dildos to douches… Which makes him a SpokesDouchenozzle. And a rich one at that. And don’t even get me started on Michelle “One day I will actually come close to winning a fucking tournament” Wie!

“Once again, Gawker comes up with the goods on I am Peter “Peapod” Arnell and his on going lawsuit with HarperCollins for conning them into a half million dollar book deal to publish his pathetic “personal branding” book aimed at the millions of people out there prepared to spend huge amounts of dosh they don’t have on formulaic pabulum their fucking dog could have written while boning their leg! It would seem that one year and two ghostwriters later, the “Leonardo da Vinci of marketing,” with help from his wife and hordes of personal assistants, has produced just 25,000 of the agreed-upon 80,000 words. (that’s like, less than 100 pages!) So, now he has to give HarperCollins' their $100,000 upfront payment back, after losing his dumbfuck court battle to keep the money. Well, what can I say? Oh, I know… Fuck you, and the Peapod you rode in on!